Birthday Blues
by HecateA
Summary: A celebration of August 18 throughout the years. Oneshot.


**So everyone's contributing to Percy's birthday, and I'm having a bad case of the plot bunnies. Oh well- I hope that this works!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters or the premise of the world of Percy Jackson, as well as the first chunk of text which is from The Last Olympian.**

* * *

**Birthday Blues**

* * *

**16th Birthday**

Slowly, the dinner crowd trickled away. Some went to the campfire for a sing-along. Others went to bed. I sat at the Poseidon table by myself and watching the moonlight on Long Island Sound. I could see Grover and Juniper at the beach, holding hands and talking. It was peaceful.

"Hey," Annabeth slid next to me on the bench. "Happy birthday."

She was holding a huge misshapen cupcake with blue icing.

I stared at her. "What?"

"It's August 18th," she said. "Your birthday, right?"

I was stunned. It hadn't even occurred to me, but she was right. I had turned sixteen this morning- the same morning I'd made the choice to give Luke the knife. The prophecy had come true right on schedule, and I hadn't even thought about the fact that it was my birthday.

"Make a wish," she said.

"Did you bake this yourself?" I asked.

"Tyson helped."

"That explains why it looks like a chocolate brick," I said. "With extra blue cement."

Annabeth laughed.

I thought for a second, then blew out the candle.

We cut it in half and shared, eating with our fingers.

* * *

**17th Birthday**

For one of the first times since the war, Annabeth was in the dining pavilion. Her ankle (which had healed so crookedly and had then been so overused during that it had nearly had to amputated) had been seriously busted and her mobility had been down the drain for the last week- their first week of peace. The reoccurring nightmares and chronic fatigue didn't help her case either, but there she was. Piper dropped her off at the Poseidon table along with something that she carried under her arm.

"Hey Wise Girl," Percy said sliding his loaded plate and glass of orange juice towards her. "Happy anniversary."

"Seaweed Brain," she greeted with a smile. "Happy birthday."

"The world was so close to burning, everything smells like smoke," Percy said shaking his head. "And you still remember something like that?"

"Of course I do, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said. "The world _was _burning last year. I remembered, didn't I? It's just that this year I didn't have the time or means to do this myself."

She slid the box towards him, plain and white, and his grin must've been pretty good because she smiled.

"You haven't even opened it yet," she said.

"I know what it is," Percy said wrapping his arm around her. He opened the box. This year he got pastries from some New York bakery- éclairs, lobster claws and whatnot, all filled with blue cream.

"These are going to be messier," he said. "Bring it."

* * *

**18th Birthday**

"Eighteen candles," Mom said putting them on the cake. "I can't believe it. You can legally vote now... Just yesterday you were swinging around lightsabbers and saying that Obi Wan would make you a Jedi knight."

"It _was _just yesterday," Annabeth said. Jason, Nico and Hazel, good cousins that they were, had to laugh from their perch.

"Get off the counters you guys," Piper said poking Jason in the knee. "None of you were raised in barns."

Hazel latched onto Frank's back instead of standing up (like a normal person, or her normalish cousin and brother). She was seriously like a monkey.

"Except for Mowgli over here," Leo said jabbing his thumb towards Jason.

"He didn't even _get _a barn," Percy pointed out.

"Don't start that argument again, sweethearts," Sally said giving Leo and her son a pointed look. "Come light the candles instead."

"If you ruin the icing, I swear to the gods that I'm going to make it hurt. That hour and a half is an hour and a half that I'm never getting back." Annabeth said.

"Do you hate icing cakes so much?" Percy asked, making a face like a kicked puppy.

"I do it for you because I love you dearly," Annabeth said putting an arm around him. "But other than that, you couldn't pay me to step into a kitchen."

Leo blasted fires. The candle wicks caught.

"Get out of here," Sally shooed her husband and the demigods. "Get to the table; I don't know why you're all here."

* * *

**19th Birthday**

Oh, university schedules. The senselessness of it all hurt in a million different ways. So did the rush of having to be on Olympus morning, noon and night to redesign this or that, or at work to make 'money' so that you could 'live well', and the whole running errands for gods or camp? Not fun either at this point of their lives.

But Percy still got the exact same message from finding a blue cupcake at his usual spot at the kitchen table that he would've if she'd handed it to him in person, accompanied by a kiss on the cheek.

_Happy birthday, I remember how important today is it's just that , love you._

* * *

**20th Birthday**

"So I've been hiding these blue chocolate chips for ages," Annabeth said taking a batch of cookies out of the oven. "You wouldn't _believe _how much time I spent worrying that your bloodhound-nose would find these before I got the chance to bake them."

Percy's eyes widened. _Blue chocolate chip cookies._

Gods bless the children of Athena and their genius.

* * *

**21st Birthday**

Percy's eyes sprawled when she brought the fruit cups out of the fridge. Contained by pastry shells (which were most probably store-bought) were little sliced blueberries and blackberries, floating in blue custard.

"Those look delicious," he said as she set the plate on the table.

"Good," Annabeth said handing him one.

"I thought that you hated baking."

"I do. But in case you haven't gotten the menu, I love you very much."

* * *

**22nd Birthday**

"Malcolm blew it, by the way."

"Blew what?" Annabeth asked from the kitchen, where she rummaged in the fridge for dessert.

"Blew your secret. He told me that you'd made brownies," Percy said teasingly.

Annabeth stood up and gave him a look over the fridge door, giving him a dirty look.

"Malcolm thinks that I'm going to test his newly developed and oh-so-super-strongly-pigmented colouring agent on my boyfriend," she said. "Malcolm is wrong. I made you cupcakes this year."

"Even better," Percy said with a grin.

* * *

**23rd Birthday**

Percy laughed when he walked into the kitchen and spotted the growing pile of blue pancakes. Annabeth only smiled.

"Just because I have to take off for business doesn't mean that I have the right to break tradition," Annabeth said letting him pull her to his side and give her a hug.

"Doesn't give me any right either, does it?" Percy asked putting his arms around her waist.

Annabeth smiled and knotted her hands behind his neck. She was pinned between him and the counter.

"Well, I'd say that it all depends on _which _tradition," she said with a smile.

Percy kissed her.

* * *

**24th Birthday**

Percy's hands closed around Annabeth's.

"Ridiculous how they need two of us to cut the cake," Annabeth said. "I think that we've both proven ourselves to be very able with knives, thank you very much."

She looked absolutely gorgeous, and she wasn't even trying- unlike most people. Her hair was put up in a flurry of curls and tiny pearls at the tips of bobby pins. From the knee up, she wore a very simple white dress that most people probably wore as summer dresses- but an enslaved child of Aphrodite had added a somewhat beaded sash to bedazzle it.

"This is what people _do _at weddings," Percy said though he was hardly the expert. "Gods, I can't wait to smash some of this cake in your face."

They'd decided to keep every important date on the same calendar square -go big or go home- except for Annabeth's birthday, which was kind of a fixed point.

"What a waste of icing!" Annabeth said.

"You didn't even ice this one," Percy protested.

"No," she said. "But I do love you very much."

"Well it's a little bit late to back off now Wise Girl, so I certainly hope so," Percy said kissing her nose.


End file.
